Tricks, Treats, and Tribulations

I remember dressing as Hulk Hogan for Halloween when I was about seven – back when you could do that and still be cool. The centerpiece of the costume was a gigantic rubber mask that smelled like freshly-washed linoleum, with eyepieces roughly the size of atoms. At the time, I wore thick, Coke-bottle glasses that fogged up easily, and so my trick-or-treating escapade that night consisted of stumbling around in a thick mist and wandering into telephone poles. The real Hulk Hogan wouldn’t be doing that for another 20 years.

That may not sound like a fun adventure, but I was ecstatic. There’s something about donning ridiculous garb and going on a candy-hunt that transcends discomfort and near-blindness, and it’s why trick-or-treating has endured as a tradition. Without it, the lead-up to Thanksgiving would lack pizazz. If Thanksgiving is a boring sports game, Halloween is the gaudy fireworks display that precedes it.

Problem is, trick-or-treating is a more sanitized event than it used to be. When I was growing up – a timeframe which now seems like it took place in the Mesozoic Era – there was a sweet spot during which my friends and I were still young enough to enjoy going door to door for candy, but old enough to roam the safer suburban areas without our parents. This was an unprecedented level of independence that lasted for two, maybe three years, and it was strangely exhilarating. It’s what I imagine going on a spacewalk would feel like, with the exception that candy pretty much contributes to the opposite of weightlessness.

One Halloween in particular, during that sweet spot, I went trick-or-treating with a couple of friends from school. We were approaching our teen years, and though it remained unspoken, we all realized that time was running short: If we pushed it much further, we’d start coming home with bags full of electric shavers and acne cream instead of Smarties and Milky Ways. So it was with a sense of urgency that we embarked, sans parents, on a mission to collect as much loot from the neighborhood as we could.

If we had been chaperoned, the following would never have happened: While giggling over our growing stash and walking to the next house, a couple of older kids – kids who felt no compunction about asking for treats in crackling, pubescent voices – burst from behind a cover of shrubbery and shrieked, “Give us your candy!” I locked eyes with my friend (well, eye; he was a pirate) and without saying a word, we sped off into the night, ducking under fences and leaping over hedges, our bags of goodies wagging behind us like parachutes. Sometime later, when it was clear we had shaken our pusuers, we sat and rested with our backs to a parked car and caught our breath. After a moment, we looked at each other, smirked, and then burst out laughing.

Had our parents accompanied us, the masked candy thieves would never have attempted their nefarious plot. And if they had, somehow, been that stupid, our parents would have stopped them cold with with their parent-ness. They would have been right to do it; it’s a parent’s job to protect their children, even from hormonal werewolves.

But I’m glad the folks weren’t around. First of all, the shrub-boys didn’t pose much of a threat; my friend and I knew that, even if they caught us, we could simply scream for help. It was a suburban neighborhood filled with trick-or-treaters, not an African jungle.

Mostly, though, I recall the night fondly. Outrunning dim-witted, would-be criminals and then laughing about it is one of those memories that, for me, adds to the luster of the holiday. Nowadays, kids tend to miss out on that kind of adventure: The kind that feels sorta scary and larger than life, but is tempered by the innate knowledge that the palpable concerns of the real world are buffered by what remains of childhood.

In a more dangerous and uncertain world, many kids won’t experience that. To their detriment.

Of course, despite all that, trick-or-treating is still a blast. If it’s become too monitored and strict, at least there’s the candy, and the crisp autumn air, and the unabashed escapism. Just one small parting piece of advice: Don’t go as Hulk Hogan. That’s so 1988.